Monthly Archives: August 2007

Universe-wide climate change?

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As others in the blog world have picked up: four of Australia’s coalition MP’s raised doubts about the consensus that humans are causing climates change. Whilst this in itself is nothing new, the interesting aspect is their justification:

The four backbenchers have questioned the link between human activity and global warming, saying Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Neptune are also warming up.

Nuclear physicist and West Australian MP Denis Jensen, former ministers and NSW backbenchers Jackie Kelly and Danna Vale, and Northern Territory MP Dave Tollner say the hypothesis of “anthropogenic" or human created global warming was based on theoretical models and unproven economic assumptions. (The Australian)

I have to say, using Astronomy to cloud the issue is a new one to me.

"Climate change is a natural phenomenon that has always been with us and always will be," they said in a document challenging the findings of a cross-party parliamentary report looking at carbon capture options for Australia.

"It is the natural property of planets with fluid envelopes to have variability in climate. Thus, at any given time, we may expect about half the planets to be warming. This has nothing to do with human activities," the four said. (Reuters Article)

Novel, fascinating but unsupported by science. And what these four backbenchers don’t explain to us is why our world hasn’t been warming at the current rate for millions of years (and why it is now) or why all the hundreds of other pieces of evidence presented in the 4th assessment report from the IPCC are wrong. Granted, that may take some time.

I wonder what it must be like to have political representation from someone with this level of insight? I must say, you’d have to be a bit worried!

Reefs at risk – pesticide use on the GBR

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The Sydney Morning Herald ran with an interesting article this morning on pesticide contamination on the GBR. The impacts of herbicides upon coral has been well documented – severely impacting upon developmental stages of coral larvae and actively impairing photosynthesis, resulting in coral bleaching.

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“Pesticides still pouring into reef waters”

Wendy Frew, Environment Reporter
August 13, 2007

EIGHT of the 10 main rivers flowing into Great Barrier Reef waters have breached Queensland’s water quality guidelines, polluting the country’s most valuable tourist attraction with increased amounts of toxic chemicals.

The herbicides atrazine and diuron were present at river mouths, inshore reefs and intertidal seagrass monitoring locations, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority report said.

Continue reading →

Comments on the decline of the Great Barrier Reef: Peter Garrett

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Below is an extract from The Age, with comments from Peter Garrett, the shadow minister for climate change, regarding the decline in coral cover on the GBR: (link to full article)

“The Great Barrier Reef is our greatest natural asset but the failure of the Howard government to introduce a comprehensive climate change plan is compounding its risk of extinction”

“The Queensland economy will be permanently damaged if we fail to deliver comprehensive climate change solutions that secure the reef’s future,” he said.

“With three quarters of the world’s coral reefs located in the Indo-Pacific and up to 60 per cent expected to be lost by 2030, our region is at the frontline of climate change.”

More on the coral bleaching event in Japan:

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As I blogged earlier, the reefs off Okinawa are undergoing a severe bleaching event. The latest news from researchers in the region suggest that it may be worse than previously thought:

Coral bleaching is observed in Ishigaki Is. since late July. High SST(>30C) has continued around the southwest Ryukyu archipelago this summer. SST is measured at 35 degree C at the most affected area of bleaching (shallow lagoon) in the daytime. – Takanori Sato

As a result of these high sea surface temperatures, the reefs are beginning to show signs of prolonged bleaching and subsequent mortality similar to that of the mass bleaching event in 1998:

Continue reading →

Coral bleaching in Florida & the Caribbean

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Mark Eakin from NOAA posted the following observations on coral list on the 31st July:

Following on to the increased potential for bleaching that we
reported two weeks ago, thermal stress has continued to increase in
the lower Florida Keys. This results from heating of the Florida Bay
waters to an anomaly well over 1 degree C. Another similar region of
anomalous warmth extends along the western coast of the Bahamas from
Andros Island to Grand Bahamas Island. The Florida Bay waters that
bathe the lower Florida Keys and the waters from northwestern Andros
to Bimini have accumulated more than 4 degree weeks of warming,
placing both areas under a Level 1 Bleaching Alert.

Late last week, Billy Causey reported about 10% bleaching of corals
off West Summerland Key around the western side of Bahia Honda
Channel on the ocean side of the bridge. It was especially
disturbing that the bleaching was hitting a diverse group of coral
species, not just the more sensitive ones.

 

Continue reading →

WWF: Reef or Rubble?

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From this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald

(Link to article, Link to WWF) :

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August 10th, 2007

AT LEAST $300 million needs to be spent urgently to clean up millions of tonnes of mud and chemical pollution pouring into the Great Barrier Reef every year, to boost the reef’s immunity to climate change, according to a new report from WWF.

The Federal Government had to act now to give the reef its best chance of avoiding future degradation, the environment group said. Its assessment comes before the release of a federal report widely believed to show a dramatic increase in pollution levels in Queensland rivers and creeks feeding into the reef.

Reefs worldwide are under threat. A University of North Carolina study published on Wednesday said large-scale degradation of the world’s coral reefs was much worse than previously thought. Over the past two decades, coral had disappeared at five times the rate of the planet’s rainforests, it said.

WWF said more than 90 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef’s pollution came from soil, hazardous chemicals and pesticides washing off farms and sugarcane plantations.

“We are creating a milkshake in the reef that is feeding the larvae of crown-of-thorns starfish,” said Nick Heath, of WWF-Australia.

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Little room for doubt: IPCC working group II reports

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unep.jpgThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the most reliable consensus on the science of climate change – has released the full report of Working group II (Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability). The conclusions of this heavily reviewed and objective scientific consensus are that ‘Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases.’

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Indo-Pacific Coral Decline

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A new study released today by Bruno & Selig in PLoS Biology shows some very interesting trends in coral decline in the Indo-Pacific. In a nutshell:

  • Average coral cover is lower than expected (22.1%, 2003).
  • Coral cover is surprisingly uniform across regions.
  • Coral cover on the GBR (often considered one of the best managed reefs in the world) is no higher than other regions (e.g. Phillipines).
  • Although there is a lack of historical baselines, regional coral cover is at least 20% below historical records.
  • Indo-pacific coral cover declined from 42.5% in the early 1980’s to 22.1% in 2003.
  • This equates to an average rate of decline of 1% per year (approximately 1500km2 per year).
  • Between 1995 – 2003 coral cover declined by 14% (3168km2 per year).
  • In 2003, only 4% of surveyed reefs had high coral cover (>50%), and only 2% of reefs had very high cover (>60%).
  • Regional scale decline of the Great Barrier Reef occured several decades earlier than often assumed (<1970).
  • Coral decline in some sub-regions of the Indo-Pacific began during the 1960’s – 1970’s.
  • Localised anthropogenic impacts have caused coral losses (e.g. sedimentation, destructive fishing practices).

Based upon 6001 surveys of 2667 reefs in the Indo-Pacific, the report makes for sobering reading. I have decided to add a “sub-section” to Climate Shifts entitled “Science Review” to encourage a weekly debate upon key scientific issues such as this – head over to Science Review to read more about the study and comment / debate the major findings.

The “GBR Swindle” comes round one last time

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Dr Pete Ridd has responded to my latest response to his comments. Given that he raises a few issues of fact, I think it is useful to explore his conjectures point by point in a final post. Some of these conjectures are easily dispelled which I think will be useful to the wider audience. I do think, however, that we will draw the line under the "Swindle" issue after this post. Continue reading →

8 million year old bacteria from glacial ice revived

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An interesting article from the Falkowski lab at Rutgers university has just been released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The authors extracted bacteria and DNA from ice between 3-5 metres beneath the surface of an Antarctic glacier, and ‘resuscitated’ a strain of bacteria 8 million years in age. Previously, the oldest record of DNA extracted from glacial ice was 800,000 years old, from the southern Greenland icesheet.The following comment from Falkoswki in a New Scientist article in particular caught my eye:

 

"Paul Falkowski of Rutgers University, who led the study, describes the ancient bacteria as small round cells that had been in a "suspended state of animation for 8 million years". He says the increasingly rapid flow of glaciers into the ocean as a result of global warming could release new organisms into the sea but he does not believe this is cause for concern because marine bacteria and viruses are typically far less harmful to human health than, for instance, those found on land."